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Fred Andrle – Playwrite, Journalist and Poet
Fred Andrle is a poet, playwright, and journalist. His current poetry collection is “What Counts,” (XOXOX Press, Gambier, Ohio, 2012). His first collection was “Love Life” (XOXOX, 2008). Fred’s poetry was featured in the anthology “Prayers to Protest: Poems that Center and Bless Us” (Pudding House Press), and his poem “The Book”, was read by Garrison Keillor on his public radio series “The Writer’s Almanac.” Fred has received playwriting and poetry fellowships from the Greater Columbus Arts Council. His one-act play, “The Eternal Brunch,” was staged by CATCO, the Contemporary American Theater Company (Columbus) in 2000. He is a member of the “House of Toast,” a Columbus poetry writing and performance group.
Fred was Executive Producer and Host of “Open Line,” a daily public affairs talk show on WOSU, a National Public Radio affiliate in Columbus. He retired in May, 2009, after 20 years hosting the program. Prior to that, he was Executive Producer for WOSU-TV.
He has received Ohio Public Broadcasting and Regional Emmy awards for his radio and television programs. Fred currently writes as an independent journalist. His opinion columns have appeared in newspapers nationwide.
Fred is an Associate at the Ohio State University Humanities Institute, where he produces and hosts public humanities forums held in locations throughout the Central Ohio community. The Ohio Humanities Council gave Fred their 2010 Bjornson Award for Distinguished Service in the Humanities.
He is a member of the Medicine and the Arts Roundtable at the Ohio State University. He co-directs the Hospital Poets series, which brings readings by Ohio poets to hospitals at OSU and across the community. Fred received a 2015 Sir William Osler MD award from OSU for collaboration in the Medicine and the Arts initiative.
Fred taught courses in mass media at Ohio Wesleyan University, Ohio Dominican University, and Northern Arizona University. He holds a Master’s Degree in Communication from Stanford.
J. Stewart Dixon is an unorthodox nondual-advaita-zen
spiritual awakening teacher. He is founder, author and creator of Blue Collar Enlightenment. He has been interviewed
by Rick Archer on Buddha at the Gas Pump, is the meditation editor of the popular mind/body/spirit blog All Things
Healing and is the owner/founder of a communications business called Audio Video Services. His first book 21 Days,
A Guide for Spiritual Beginners (2011, PIE Publishing / Amazon) continues to help spiritual awakening seekers worldwide
become spiritual awakening finders. To find out more about his teaching and course visit: www.bluecollar-enlightenment.com
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WEBSITE/BLOG/VIDEOS/BOOK/COURSE- www.bluecollar-enlightenment.com
“No problem can be solved from the same level
of consciousness that created it.”
– Albert Einstein
Welcome. You’re listening to Sancit. Where you’ll find everything to do with spirituality, life lessons, holistic living, and medicine to become your true self. We all have stories, journeys, experiences, and love. Here’s your host, Aron O’Dowd.
Erin: Hello, and welcome. You’re listening to Sancit. On today’s show we have Jeffery Dixon. He is a spiritual seeker who went to sit with gurus around the world to understand their teachings. In 2010, he had this experience where he felt like he was awakened and enlightened. After that experience, he wanted to create a company called Blue Collar Enlightenment to teach people about what and how they can become enlightened as well as awakened. He is the author of Twenty One Days: A Guide for Spiritual Beginners. His website is www.bluecollarenlightenment.com. Welcome to the show, Jeff. How are you, today?
Jeff: I’m good, Erin. Thank you, very much for having me on your show.
Erin: You’re very welcome. At what stage of your life did you adventure into spiritual seeking?
Jeff: I was eighteen. I’m 46 now. I began pretty early. I was a freshman in college. I’m a walking spiritual cliché. The first book that I ever read was Shirley Maclaine’s “Out On a Limb”, which was one of the hallmark books of the New Age when it began in 1987. I read that book, and I wanted to have what she was describing in that book, which was an out of body experience. That began my spiritual seeking adventure.
Erin: What made you adventure into this area? Was it the book or was it something someone told you?
Jeff: Good question. For me, when I was 18 … I guess it even started earlier than that … There was a general sense that something was missing. There was a sense that there was something more. I was unhappy. When I got to college and was a little more open minded and adventurous to exploring more things, I put that on the plate. Is there anything to religion? Is there anything to spirituality? Is there a soul? Is there something more? This seeking came right from the beginning from that sense of lack of … there’s gotta be something more to this life. That was really the … my own work today … what I call the invitation. That was the primary invitation of life that I heard from an early age. That same invitation continued all the way up through when I was 40 something and had a spiritual awakening.
Erin: At the age of 18, did you have a sequence from 18 to 48, or was it just explore while you go?
Jeff: Absolutely. I had a sequence. I think it’s fairly typical sequence. When I was in college, I was what I call an intelligence seeker. I was looking for answers. I was looking for proof, and also some sort of social millieu that I could be a part of that was supporting. I could have friends that understood who I was. It began there and it began specifically with investigations into yoga, meditation, out of body experiences, something called hemi-sync. I was very much attracted to Robert Monroe’s Monroe Institute which offered courses and classes, and products that allowed you to meditate using a type of technology.
Throughout college and a few years after college, yoga, meditation, hemi-sync, et cetera, I did indeed prove to myself to a satisfactory degree that there was something to spirituality. There’s something about it. There’s something more. I had numerous out of body experiences. I had a lot of kundalini experiences, et cetera. Enough to say okay there’s something to this.
Then, I progressed onto another level of seeking which was after more experience. I would essentially have these experiences and they were really beautiful, and then began a cycle where I would have experiences, and then I would go do more spiritual seeking and read more books, do different techniques. I was always … this is typical of a lot of individuals who begin seeking … Of course, you want to feel better. You want something more positive in your life. You want to have all of the feelings last and all of the darker areas in your life that you’ve been running from to heal and be fulfilled. So, I did this.
The problem with it is that any experience comes and goes no matter how small or sophisticated or large that it is. I did this for a number of years, and I began to smell a rat. I began to sense that this is just a cycle I’m going to be continually doing.
Then, I moved on to another sequence in my own seeking that instead of adding an experience to the individual, I began taking away pieces of the false parts. I began a dismantling process. This area of seeking has more to do with non-duality advaita vendanta. Some of the teachers that I was involved with at the time, and over the years … Some of them will be familiar to your readers. Some of them won’t. These are individuals like Eckerts Holy, Adi Da, Gangaji, Samuel Bonder, Andrew Cohen, Nick Arjuna Ardagh … A whole slew of teachers when I was … This was when I was in my late twenties, early thirties. The whole Neo -Advaita Vendanta Movement, which includes all of those teachers, had begun in America. I began to seek these teachers out, read their books, and seek their company. This was in the early nineties.
In the last two and a half decades, the landscape in this area dramatically changed because of the internet and because of the abundance of those teachers. Back then, there were still just a handful. I made trips to California and had teachers come out to the east coast where they stayed in my home. We did workshops, and I offered programs to people in my area. This went on for quite a few years, then I began to have what’s traditionally called non-abiding awakening.
A non-abiding awakening is when you have a grand aha moment. You realize something deeper, something truer about yourself. It sticks for a day, a week, an hour, or a month even. Then you’re back to being separate ego personality individual. This went on for a number of years. It was quite painful. There’s something very painful about … The metaphor that I always like to use is a UFO picking you up, zipping you across the far side of the galaxy, showing you their home planet and galaxy and seeing all these beautiful, amazing, and wondrous things. Then, in the blink of an eye, you’re sent back down on the streets of Baltimore. It’s quite painful to have that experience. This is what non-abiding awakening is like. However, it’s part of the process. It’s part of the … there’s a natural sequence of events that I believe in and I teach that are part of the awakening process. It’s almost required that you have these beautiful releases and moments of freedom then you need to integrate it and experience separation again, and wash back and forth.
This went on. We’re now at about … I’m going through a really rapid-fire report of these years. When I was in my late thirties, early forties, you think you’re so … The awakening that I had which was the final … What I call the last seed of doubt, the last movement of this non-abiding awakening was in 2010. It’s been about five or five and a half years.
Erin: Did you feel like you were running from something when you met these gurus and people that were on a different level than you?
Jeff: Sure. I was running from … There was a lot of running. There’s always a lot of running. What happens naturally in this process is you … There’s no escaping going through this process without running into your own shadow. To your own pain. To the pain and separation itself. So this includes a lot of fear, heart ache, soul investigation that digs up a lot of stuff that you’re not always interested in meeting. Very much so, Erin, yes.
There was one particular thing that I ran from for quite a few years. It was just a huge amount of existential fear that would rear it’s head and really rip me. I would tremor in it’s presence in a way that’s just beyond words. It would make my tail go between my legs and me want to run. This would happen. Then, six months later it would come again. I would need that six months to recuperate from this encounter. This isn’t true of everyone’s experiences, it’s just my particular experience.
So, yes, absolutely I was running. It’s very paradoxical path. It’s a … Instead of adding anything to you again as I’ve mentioned before, it’s more of a dismantling and letting go. That’s a uncovering how we are in denial of so many things. Uncovering that and seeing that truth definitely has it’s painful moments that we all tend to run from.
Erin: Through your meeting all these people, did you find that the dismantling took you longer to get to the next level, or to figure out where your awakeness was coming?
Jeff: Yeah, there’s always a frustration at times. There’s always a … it’s natural process. There’s always a frustration that you want to get this thing over with. It just seems to drag on forever and ever. Then, you have an opening and it’s … I was just thinking about this this morning. There’s no part of organic life that doesn’t unfold organically. Human beings are born. We’re not hatched. There’s nothing immediate about it.
Often, in enlightenment schools or in spiritual awakening schools, there’s this myth that in one moment you don’t have it and you’re lost then in the blink of an eye bang, clear and neat and clean, in the next moment there you are. You’re awake. You’re enlightened. I really don’t agree with that myth. Maybe, one in a billion of us, that’s going to happen. I’m not shoving it completely aside. For most of us blue collar folks, or normal people, there’s going to be a very organic time involvement, messy biological, psychological process that unfolds in the spiritual awakening process. It definitely took longer.
The good news is, for those who are listening to this right now, is I think evolution and humanity has gotten better at it. Even in the last two decades has gotten so much better at it. The number of teachers, the amount of authors, the availability of this teaching; just peruse spiritual awakening or enlightenment videos on YouTube and there’s a ton of them. There’s a lot more resources that are available to a lot more individuals. My work is a part of those resources.
I think we’re headed … here’s the beautiful news about time … I think we’re headed to a point and I hope to be a part of this where just like a college or university four or five years maybe from the beginning to the end where you can really dive deep into it’s study in a practical way and include all of the mystery and paradox simultaneously. I think we’re at a point in evolution of humanity where we put our foot down and say this shouldn’t take decades. This is our birth right and it’s now we’re capable of this happening in the course of several years.
Erin: Out of all the people you’ve met and you’ve sat down with, person to person, who stood out the most to you?
Jeff: That’s a great question. There were in my particular path, about twelve very influential teachers. You look at those as a funnel. At the top of this big funnel were the gurus who you would go sit and there was no way in the world you were going to have a one on one with them. They were too big and too public. Nothing wrong with that. You would go to their sanctuary and there would be five or six hundred people if not more. You go further down into the funnel and the numbers start to get smaller with the teachers. I found that the teachings and the teachers that were most influential were way down at the bottom of the funnel. You would go to a weekend workshop or you would work with these teachers, and there were twenty people in a class. You could have one on one sessions with them. Just like anything … Violin lessons. Sure you can take group violin lessons, but you’re going to get a lot more out of it if you’re doing one on one. This is not true for everybody at all stages of seeking. For me, personally, that closeness and proximity that intensity that was garnered from being with those teachers was the most influential.
You asked specifically who those teachers were. There were a handful. One was a student of Gangaji’s. Her name was Solenae. She came to my house a number of times and workshops. I was living in Washington, D.C. at the time. I was part of being very intimate and helpful and getting a lot out of her work. There was another teacher named Michael Regan who was nondenominational essentially, but awake and also a really great guy. Same thing. He came to our house and I did a lot of work with him out west. He’s from Arizona. I think one of the great teachings that’s available today is Awakening Now. This is a teaching by Samuel Bonder and his wife Linda Groves Bonder. They’re the same thing. A smaller teaching, more intimacy and intensity. Then, I’ll throw in Nick Arjuna Ardagh. He has a great teaching at work, as well.
In the grand scheme of things, Erin, and to anybody who’s listening, really this evolution of your own spiritual awakening includes all teachers and teachings and life itself. There’s no … You can’t just go … the little list I just made there … Going and thinking that just because you go sit with them, isn’t necessarily going to be part of your path. It’s more of the whole ball of wax that is important.
This leads me to another element of the work that I do. I think it’s so vital in this process if this is something that you’re interested in, relative spirituality to hear from more than one teacher. In the online courses that I offer, I always have a co-teacher from another different school. What’s really beautiful about this is I make it very clear that this teacher is not to parrot my own teachings, but it’s actually to give their own point of view about the spiritual awakening process. The class that I’m teaching right now is with a woman named Fiona Robertson. She’s with Living Inquiries. It’s really great because not everyone is the same. It allows you to hear, see and feel different angles of this work. This is what I did with the teachers that I sat with and hung out with. I think that’s a very important part of the … Here’s a phrase I love to say … It’s a very important part of democratization of spiritual awakening. We’re in an age where we no longer have to hear it from just one teacher.
Erin: In 2010, you experienced this awakeness. How were you able to transmit the awakeness experience to the public in order for them to be awakened themselves.
Jeff: In 2010, I had a very ordinary day. I walked down into my ordinary office and sat at my very ordinary computer. I have a business of audio/video services. I was working on a quote that I really didn’t want to do and got bored with it.
Then, I started surfing the internet and being a spiritual seeker. I was searching spiritual websites. I ran into an article online. The article really spoke to me. It was the right article at the right time for Jeff Stewart Dixon. After I read the article, the energy and feeling state and the calmness and peace and clarity, and the unity of awakening overtook me. I knew it was important, but also I had experienced this state many times before. There was something quite different about it this time and I sensed it.
What I did, was began a journal. I kept a journal for 21 days immediately after this awakening. What’s it like … because I sensed that this was it, but I wasn’t quite sure. That’s very odd, I know. When you go through non-abiding awakening you begin to … When it comes and goes and comes and goes, in a very healthy way, you always allow any experience to run its course and see what happens. This is what I was doing. For 21 days I kept a journal of this experience, of what it was like to get up and go to work in the awakened state, of a marriage and a mortgage, and a house and a son. My son was 3 or 4 at the time. What is it like to interact normally with the rest of the world in the awakened state? You go to the grocery store, you go fishing, go hiking, go visit your high school. I did quite a bit during those 21 days so I kept a journal of it. T
hat’s my first book. It’s called 21 Days: A Guide for Spiritual Beginners. That’s how I began my teaching, to answer your question. It’s just simply a … In many ways, the book was written for myself and for my friends and family as a way of explaining what I had gone through, and to purge myself of it. I didn’t use any of the usual spiritual non-duality the advanta vidanta religious terms. That just wasn’t my cup of tea.
Since the book, it’s been a … and I wrote that book in 2011 … It’s been a slow, evolving evolution of teaching. I’m teaching publicly. Refining the process of assisting others through mystery and paradox and what I call non-doing exercises and doing exercises. There is, in a general sense, and this is what I tell everybody who comes to my work, who comes to blue collar enlightenment, this work can take you 90 percent of the way.
There is a lot of things that one can do to facilitate spiritual awakening. A lot of this has to do with self-inquiry, mindfulness, with noticing the body and being present in our emotions, the mind, the thoughts, the physical sensations, and allowing all of those elements, and really noticing and fine tuning. There are exercises and techniques that one can do. Then, there’s a whole other part of this work, which is easily seen online. A lot of other teachers teach this as well. This is the non-doing work where you’re just simply in the room and present and this type of resonance goes on. It’s a type of being with the truth that goes on. That’s 90 percent of it.
The last 10 percent of it for any individual going through spiritual awakening is out of any teachers hands, and it’s also out of the hands and control of the student. This last 10 percent is grace. This last 10 percent is mystery. This is what I know. This is what I experienced in my own process of awakening. Quite naturally, and normally this is how I came to teach.
I always think when I’m creating anything … a course or a book, or a blog post, it’s like going back in time and speaking to myself, what would I have wanted to hear 15 years ago when I was unhappy, suffering, seeking fulfillment, not getting it, lost, confused … what would I have wanted to hear from some regular guy about spiritual awakening and enlightenment? Not from somebody who’s a rocket scientist PhD. Not from someone who’s a guru or a famous author, and not from somebody who’s special and seems to be all the way at the top of the mountain, and I’ll never get there. What would it be like to hear it from somebody who’s your next door neighbor? Who is your coworker? Who is your friend? What is … How is spiritual awakening taught from that level? That’s become my modus operandi in helping people. It’s not to stand on top of a mountain with a bullhorn and say you can do it. To actually go down the mountain with the cramp-ons and the tools and the ropes, and to help individuals in one small step at a time, and to be right there next to them.
I just don’t think that it can work any other way. That’s not to say that the big teachers that are doing this … that speak to hundreds of people … that’s awesome and great and there’s a necessity for that. At this point in my own teaching work, that’s where I am coming from, is this intimate and intense personal teaching.
Erin: Is that why you call it blue collar enlightenment?
Jeff: It is, yes. That name comes from … there’s two reasons for that name, Blue Collar Enlightenment. It points to who this work is for in one sense, and I’m using that term Blue Collar very loosely in this regard. Of course, it includes … it’s not really pointing to where you are relative to your work. It’s just saying normal folks, blue collar folks, white collar folks, however you want to look at it.
Then, the other side of it is very much a way of … this term Blue Collar Enlightenment dismantles and defuses the whole specialness and uniqueness and what seems very rare about the term enlightenment, and brings it down to Earth. As that name, it represents everything that this work is about, which is to say that yes, for you this is possible. Enlightenment is no longer in the category of being available to yogis and gurus in some mountaintop in India. It’s B.S. It’s available to us in the way that evolution is offering it to us today. It’s completely available. It’s not this super extreme aesthetic, impossible thing that it once was. It’s actually attainable. It’s actually not super duper seventh stage million dollar enlightenment. It’s just blue collar enlightenment.
Try it on first. Once you experience spiritual awakening in all of it’s ordinariness, you will find that it’s absolutely beautiful and amazing. This is what I found. I found that it was plenty enough. This is where the term Blue Collar Enlightenment is from.
Erin: How would a person know if they have reached spiritual awakeness or spiritual enlightenment?
Jeff: It’s completely 100 percent self-evidence. There’s no … I mean, I did mention earlier … Wow, is this awakening or not? There is somewhat a paradox about it. You really have to boil this work down to one thing: whether or not you’re on a de-existential level, and whether or not you’re okay and happy and whole. This is how you know. You sensitize yourself to this element of separation and fear, and you begin to see how it’s been hijacking and not making life so pleasant for you. What goes away with awakening and with Blue Collar Enlightenment, is this sense of separation. Now, it’s not going to manifest for everybody, but for me it manifested as a sense of existential depression. For me, that was gone.
Then, simultaneously was this … This needs to be mentioned, too, because this was very much talked about and part of it. There’s a non-dual connection and experience to the one consciousness that is living, breathing being this whole existence. This connection never ever goes away in good moments and bad moments; in moments of trial and tribulation, in moments of joy. It’s always there. There’s this deep, deep rooted connection, and you’re no longer separate from it. It’s right out front and there all the time.
This is spiritual awakening. That is the marriage part of spiritual awakening. That’s how you know. When you look out and see someone else, and you see some other thing, you have an experience and you realize fundamentally that they are not separate from you. They are you. That’s how you know you’re there.
Erin: Earlier on, you described about mindfulness and all the elements that you teach on the Blue Collar Enlightenment. What is the building block? Where should an individual start to progress their spiritual progress to be awakened or enlightened?
Jeff: Awesome question. It really does begin with mindfulness. For those who are listening who might already know about non-duality or advida adanta, mindfulness and self-inquiry are exactly the same. I gravitate towards mindfulness. Right now in America and in the West, there’s a beautiful movement. It’s a scientific term called mindfulness-based stress reduction. It’s based in neuroscience, and there’s a whole technique and process where one gets in touch with non-judgmental awareness.
It begins here to answer your question. If one is feeling stressed, separate, unhappy or unfulfilled, there is … this is on one half of the spectrum of the whole spiritual awakening stuff. There is this condition or this sense of lack of fulfillment or depression or separation or just unhappiness. There’s a whole beautiful neuroscience and teaching or technique that’s out there that’s available to help those individuals. This is where I start. I think this is where … You cannot arrive to spiritual awakening without self-inquiry or mindfulness. Without knowing about self-awareness, without being self-aware … Instead of trying to perfect the body and perfect the mind and trying to completely rein our emotions in, it’s more or less about all the work or steps that one does in the beginning. Simply about realizing, being aware of awareness itself. If I could just for one second, simply point in this particular moment.
Any of the work that I do begins with three deep breaths. Anybody that’s listening, take a minute, and inhale once, exhale, inhale twice, then the third time. Then, what we do, is we take a moment to notice the body and to notice all the parts of the body, and to allow anything that’s there to be there. Then, the next movement in this exercise is to notice motions and to allow them to be. Then, the next movement is to notice the mind and thoughts, and simply allow all of them to be there. These thoughts and emotions, or the physical sensations both good or bad, just allow them to be there. Then, we see who is the one, what is the one element that is actually witnessing, that is aware of all of these emotions and thoughts and physical sensations. Who is that? What is that? The more … It’s a muscle. The more one does this, the more this sense of awareness, this background emptiness of this witness position comes into focus.
You see that there’s in effect, an island, a ground of mystery of emptiness, of consciousnesses, of awareness, that is untouched at all times by the parade of physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts that are ongoing. That parade never ends, even with awakening, it doesn’t end. Thoughts and emotions continue. This is all fine, all good, nothing wrong with any of it. What is noticed, then is this awareness.
Again, back to your original question. It starts here. What’s really great about this … Mindfulness is taught in something like 250 to 300 universities, at least in the United States alone, that there’s this whole beautiful movement that is part of the spectrum of spiritual awakening and enlightenment. What I teach in my work … any of the courses that I give, the first half of it is about mindfulness and self-inquiry. The second half gets into the more paradoxical and mysterious elements of spiritual awakening further up the spectrum.
That’s where it begins with awareness itself. Surprisingly, too … This may be surprising to a lot of people, there are exercises that one can do to allow this awareness to come into focus. This is exactly what the Blue Collar Enlightenment course that I offer teaches.
Erin: If you could look back in everything you’ve done so far to today, would you change or adjust anything?
Jeff: I would, actually. Thank you for asking. This is a funny one. In my own seeking and in my own path to awakening, there is nothing that I would change and nothing that one can change. It is what it is. In that regard, I don’t have any regrets, or anything that I would want to change. As far as my teaching work, yeah. Funny enough, about a year after the awakening that I had, I had published my book. I did an interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump with Rick Archer. It’s like your program. He has video, so … Most if not all the teachers or individuals that he interviews are about non-duality and advaida vendanta. What’s very odd about spiritual awakening, is that it essentially dismantled your ego and the personality, and the identity personality project. You basically just crushed it. You’ve realized something truer and deeper. What’s very odd about awakening is that then in order to navigate and to live a midst life, essentially this cloak and this clothing that you’ve just shed, you have to pick it back up a bit and put it back on so that you can be a normal human being and go to work, and pay bills and do all these things.
At least, this is what my preference was. My preference was not to go sit on some mountain top somewhere and to hide away. My preference was to okay I’m awake. Awesome. I also live and work, and have a family, and I want to engage in the world, still. You end up putting this personality cloak back on. Here’s the odd part. You don’t necessarily know what kind of cloak back on. You can kind of choose. You can choose to … how was it that … as far as being a teacher, and doing this work, how do I want … what is it that I want to say? What is that like? I wasn’t so blue collar in this interview. I had a really nice sport coat on, and my hair slicked back, and I didn’t know who I wanted to be and how I wanted to teach. I was very new at this. I was strangely at odds with the book that I’d just written, 21 Days, which is very much a blue collar experience.
It’s not that big of a deal, and Rick was really awesome. It was a great interview. I guess I wish I’d held off for another year or two on that interview before I settled in to who I am now as a teacher, and to how I help individuals. In many ways, I’m sort of goofy in regards to this. I have ultimately no regret about doing that because it served it’s purpose. But I wish I could rewind the clock and sit there with Rick again with a t-shirt that says bass fishing on it in my baseball cap, and re-do it. It’s so funny. It’s all good. To answer your question, Erin.
Erin: You talk about awakeness, enlightenment, the elements and getting there. Do you still experience anger, sad, happiness, joy … all those emotions?
Jeff: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Another awesome question. Spiritual awakening does not lobotomize you. It does not preclude you from having any of the normal range of emotions. What is does, however, is it removes the … let’s say I get angry. I still do. I get angry and stressed. It removes the fangs. Your resiliency to the emotional up and down, again, completely normal … Your resiliency you bounce right back.
Let’s say my dog … I have a Pit Bull and she’s really loving and sweet, but high energy. She gets off of the leash and she’s running through the neighborhood. That pushes my button. Then I gotta go get her at 6 am in the morning, or at night. Then, I get angry. Great. I get angry. I puff up and I go get the dog, and I bring her back and “bad dog”, you know? Then it dissipates.
Let’s say I still have my other work; my audio/video services company. There’s a lot that I do there. I purchase and install audiovisual equipment for large corporations and churches et cetera. There’s a lot of coordination there. There’s a lot of things to do and details. The body mind gets stressed. What doesn’t happen is … because consciousness is so far forward with the awakened state, that is sees it all, views it all, says oh yeah there’s stress, allows it to be there. It comes and goes, then it dissipates quickly.
Absolutely, Erin. There’s no … I think that’s another myth about enlightenment that somehow you’re immune to all of these things. I say that, again, with what evolution is offering the world today, relative to spiritual awakening and enlightenment, it comes with a full range of human emotion thought, and physical sensations. In many ways, this is one of the terms that I use for this work, you can replace the word enlightenment, with humanness. It’s about fully embracing your humanity and being here present 100 percent. This includes all emotions and your thoughts. To be clear, the difference is there’s more of an equanimity, more of a sense of peace and fulfillment as you ride the waves of this life which includes these thoughts, emotions, and sensations.
Erin: Out of everything that you learned, and experienced, is there anything that you would like to offer as a gem to the audience?
Jeff: The one single greatest aspect, tool, element, whatever you want to call it that allowed J. Stewart Dixon to arrive to awakening was honesty and the courage to be honest in every single moment. This honesty of what I was feeling way back when I was 18 years old, then the honesty to experience many beautiful spiritual experiences, but to say still not enough. Having out of body experiences, psychic phenomena, knowing about reincarnation. It’s not enough. To be honest there, and then further on down teachers and experience their energy and say it’s not good enough.
I don’t want to just sit and be with teachers and be part of some club. I’m going to be honest here and say I want something more. Then, deeper honesty fears honesty. You arrive to this point where all of this dark night shadow, hard stuff comes from. To be completely honest with it and say this is part of the process. I can do this yet it hurts. It’s painful to be honest about that.
Finally, to be completely honest about the subtlest little degree of separation that you feel. After you’ve been doing this for years you’ll have many beautiful moments and ins and outs, and you can fool yourself. You fool yourself and say I think I’m there. I think I’ve arrived there. Yet, there’s one tiny little part that if you aren’t completely honest about, so I was honest there, too. It takes courage to have this type of honesty; this type of deep, deep what another teacher called radical honesty.
That’s the one thing that I would share. No matter where, for those listeners, no matter where you are right now, what are you honest with? One of the questions is how’s life? How is life? Answer that honestly to yourself. Take a look at your life. Is it what you want it to be? Are you happy, or is there something more to be discovered? Do you feel unfulfilled? Answer that question. Do it really honestly. Find the courage to really investigate it. If something relative to spiritual awakening or Blue Collar Enlightenment, seems like the good thing to do, then excellent. Then you have answered this honestly and you’ve begun to take the steps to follow through. That, Erin is the one element of my own path, which I now teach. It’s part of my course. Let’s get honest, here.
Erin: Jeff, where can we find you?
Jeff: You can go to BlueCollar-Enlightenment.com. There is a free course at that site. It’s a free course that is with Fiona Robertson, as I mentioned with self-inquiries. It’s one those pages where email exchange, and then you get access to the course and a free book. If you go to that web site there’s a very non-commitment way of investigating spiritual awakening, investigating Blue Collar Enlightenment, and for you to begin to see if this is honestly for you. To see if this works. For those who are listening, go check it out. The course that I’m teaching right now is filled, and you can no longer get into it. In January, February, and March is the next course date, so if you subscribe by going to BlueCollar-Enlightenment, then you’ll find out all the details about the next course. I think that’s probably the best way to find out about this.
Erin: Fantastic, Jeff. I just want to say thank you very much for taking your time and sharing your stories, experiences, and knowledge to us.
Jeff: Thank you, Erin. It’s been great. I’ve enjoyed your really beautiful questions and your presence and your equanimity. I’m grateful to be on your show, and I hope that more than anything, that your work and my work combined reaches a few hearts in this world, and makes one more individual become a little saner and a little happier.
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